


capita mortua

by xumyuho



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Bruises, Cage Fights, Child Soldiers, F/M, M/M, Masturbation, Non-Linear Narrative, So much kissing someone will sue me for it, Underage Characters, Underage Drinking, Violence, kids have miserable lives in a miserable futuristic world, trash - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 11:33:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8444254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xumyuho/pseuds/xumyuho
Summary: Soonyoung grows up. A bit late and a bit too quickly, but he does.Wonwoo is both his witness and his partner in crime, just as guilty, and in the nick of time.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [allthatconfetti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthatconfetti/gifts).



> Cat, the goddess and creator of this whole exchange, I bow down to thee. You made sure everything worked, you took care of all of us, you helped us create and have fun, you stood by us and didn't drop us when we all cried and struggled and did not make it easy for you. You're the reason this fic and the rest of the amazing ones posted in the exchange-collections exist! I could put you in as a co-author tbh. Reason of Creation? 
> 
> I know you might remember that I was supposed to do a completely different au with completely different charas/pairings, but it didn't work. And I was comforted by PEOPLE who heard you hoped for soonwoo The True One True Pairing to have more...dark fics. And I KNOW THE TAGS LOOK HEAVY, but I hope you enjoy this, though it is bumpy and not at all worthy of you. I adore you, thank you for this amazing experience, and enjoy! 
> 
> (IF ANYONE DRAGS ME FOR THAT JUDGE JUDY QUOTE I WILL DEFEND MYSELF I KNOW A LAWYER)

  
  
The cage is a foreign and twisted thing to Soonyoung. A place where people willingly step in, fully knowing they can’t step out without pain. People step in, they mouth off and they call themselves warriors, fighters, they swing wide and something gleams in their eyes, megalomania and bloodlust all wrapped up with a bow. It makes Soonyoung shake and choke on a breath, every Saturday night, and he can only swallow it down once the others step back, and Wonwoo steps in.

 Jeon Wonwoo, the calm and smart boy from Seoul, worlds away from Soonyoung, who fights nothing like those with delusions of grandeur or a taste for pain. Wonwoo fights like an animal. Like he’s cornered, like he’s afraid. The first time Soonyoung sees him in the cage, Seungcheol explains the rules, holds his lips close to Soonyoung’s ear as he speaks. “There are no rules, really. No weapons, stay in the cage.” And that’s terrifying.  
  
Soonyoung can see the tremble of Wonwoo’s lip as he closes his hands to fists tightly and enters the circle behind the hutch. He removes his shirt and his opponent promises to plant new bruises right where Wonwoo’s past ones are still turning yellow. When the bell rings, Soonyoung clings onto the fabric of Seungcheol’s shirt and his eyes get teary from all the time he spends not blinking.

 Wonwoo’s strikes are vicious and desperate, he jumps on his feet with certainty of where to go. He has been in the circle before, he knows where it starts and where it ends, how much room he has to move. He dives and evades, surges and uses dirty blows, and doesn’t let his opponent to catch his breath. Wonwoo is relentless, like he’s saving himself by eating everyone else alive, hates the taste, takes that out. And unlike the rest of them, Wonwoo doesn’t want to just win. He fights like he wants to survive.    
  
“He’s great, right?” Seungcheol asks him.  
  
Soonyoung isn’t smart. He doesn’t know if violence can be right in one way and wrong in the other, and doesn’t have the means to think about it. He just knows he can’t look away when Wonwoo moves.   
  
A voice speaks that isn’t Seungcheol. “Humans should have wiped themselves out centuries ago. Do what is natural.”

“This is natural?”

Soonyoung hears his own voice and swears he sees the blood under his nails, though none of the images have the bright colour of present and his voice sounds higher, weaker, meeker. The weight of something rests inside his palm and the wind of the wasteland hurts his ears, the sand makes his eyes sting. Something explodes and a big hand pats his shoulder. 

“As natural as it gets in this world.”

The voice is familiar but very, very distant, especially since Soonyoung is standing alone in a disgusting wreckage of a bathroom. It’s when he realizes this is a memory, and his eyes slowly focus on the reflection in the fractured mirror. His face, his eyes that are alive, his chest coming up and going down.

He remembers to breathe and spits into the sink, then hides his clothes behind one of the toilets.

It’s another Saturday night. He fetches a bag and starts going through the audience, where everyone has something trembling under their skin. When everything happens too slowly, it stuffs the atmosphere with bloodlust. He walks past the bared teeth of people and the cash that weighs in their pockets, ready to be thrown at the person who hurts someone else the most, who shows the most blood.

 Soonyoung gathers that cash in his boyshorts that squeeze his hips too hard and leave too much of his ass out for it to be comfortable, writing up bets. It's cold and it’s cramped, the only warm air is the humid breath of others coating his neck. A hand cups his hipbone and he asks for a twenty, he gets it and leaves. It feels like the hand goes with him, a cold print of it stuck to his skin.

 “59 in twenty, fifty and sixty for Wonwoo, 36 in twenty for the other guy,” he yells over the other voices and hands the tickets over to Seungcheol. The man grins and shakes his head slightly, counting the papers and the money.

 “You didn't bother to even memorize his name?”

 “No need,” Soonyoung says with a shrug, looking over to the center of the machine hall. The cage never fails to impress him, built tall to reach from the floor to the ceiling, the hashed bars shining in the coloured lighting. For now it’s empty, resting hollow and daunting.

Soonyoung loves how Wonwoo stands by it, looking like he owns it. How his skin is colored turquoise and orange by the lights, forehead against the metal and eyes closed, fingers forming a fist and then opening. He doesn’t look human. His ritual. Soonyoung touches the part where he still feels the phantom of a cold hand grabbing him, and massages the sensation away.

Seungcheol pockets the bets and ushers him away, saying “Your confidence in him is so annoying, get out of my face.”

The other guy arrives and enters the cage, a wiry young thing with big hands and a soft face. He won’t stop jumping, trying the air under his wings and swaying from one foot to another. Wonwoo opens his eyes and steps in too, toeing off his shoes and zipping open his hoodie, dropping it onto the ground. His shoulders roll back, his back curls and braces itself, Soonyoung can see the shivering dying from his skin, his muscles calming down.

People push against the cage and punch it with their hands. They scream and they demand. Wonwoo stays focused on the opponent in front of him with steady eyes, and when the bell rings he takes a step and his knuckles sink into the nose of a foreign face. The first drop of blood flies through the air as a promise for more. Soonyoung watches silently until the end.

“Hi.”

Wonwoo steps out of the rickety metal door to the alley and raises his eyes to chase Soonyoung’s voice. His other eye is swollen shut and his lower lip is split, right by a past wound that had only begun to heal this week. Still he smiles, wide and clumsy and winces at the burn. Soonyoung snorts and ignores his willingness to soothe it out for him, how he stops to imagine how Wonwoo’s lip would feel under the pad of his finger.  
  
“Want me to walk you to your house?” Soonyoung asks and steps out of the alley with Wonwoo following suit. It’s the middle of the night, cold and brisk, and by default Soonyoung gazes up to look at the sky only to see its murky black color. No specks of stars can be seen in the city.   
  
Wonwoo hums and makes a serious face as he thinks it through, kicking pebbles from his way. “Nah, I’d rather go home tonight.” He wraps his fingers around Soonyoung’s wrist, feels the pulse there, and Soonyoung looks at the ground while his chest grows tighter. He just _knows_ Wonwoo is smiling.

Home is a room in the attic of Seungcheol’s house, not Wonwoo’s parents’ house, not the dumpster Soonyoung would probably be living in if not there. Home has two mattresses coated in the smell of boy, surrounded by antique furniture, chairs shaped like eggs and engine-parts stored away in case they can be useful one day. The air is heavy with the scent of oil and gasoline that will only vanish once the house burns down. Seungcheol always argues he’s not a hoarder but their beds are surrounded by piles of useless shit, from clocks to books to bicycles and old electronics.

  
“It’s dusty in here,” Wonwoo apologized the first time Soonyoung stepped into the room, holding nothing on his arms to add to the mess. Just the clothes on his back. The house is foreign to him then, made from wood instead of iron, the rooms are filled with things and don’t echo when you shout. It’s not a bunker, or a carrier, the walls could be shot through, and it makes Soonyoung feel vulnerable and uncomfortable. He keeps himself low as he walks ahead.

  
“I don’t mind. I’m not used to clean air anyway.” He shows a smile and Wonwoo forces one back while he’s trying to shove something under his mattress. Soonyoung knows it’s probably porn, but doesn’t assure Wonwoo he doesn’t mind. Not like Wonwoo would leave it out even if Soonyoung did.   
  
“Sorry about the mess. I’ve just used this freely, I never thought someone would actually move in.” Wonwoo scratches his scalp and looks around for anything else he should hide from a total stranger. “You’re from Namyangju, right?” He finds none and plops down onto the mattress and gestures politely to the unused one just meters away. Soonyoung gets down on his knees and feels it, surprised by how comfortable it is. “Near the wastelands, huh… I’ve never lived near a drought zone.”   
  
Soonyoung snorts. “You do now, since it’s not near a drought zone as much as it’s a total fucking drought zone, city boy. I haven’t seen a lake in years.” Wonwoo scowls at the nickname and kicks Soonyoung’s shin, loosely, but he does. The movement travels from skin to bone, up Soonyoung’s body and down again. The casual touchiness sinks a hook into him and reels so violently his head spins, and Soonyoung tries to hold back a jubilant grin.   
  
“I don’t travel much, okay? And the last time I read about Namyangju it hadn’t dried up yet.” Wonwoo’s smile is a lot to take in. His face pulls into every direction at the same time and Soonyoung doesn’t feel like keeping up, but it also makes him feel like smiling too. He doesn't comment on Wonwoo's tastes and how the book he read was probably decades old and worth a fortune. “Seoul must be the next one to go then,” he jokes.   
  
Soonyoung feels a bit saddened when he thinks about it, enough to pout. He just arrived, with his boots filled with dust and sand of the wasteland and holes in his clothes from bullets shot from the rudimentary guns of desperate raiders. Those who live in the wilderness, who kill anything for water and money, the ones Soonyoung has fought all his life, they always move with the drought and will set fire to this city.   
  
“I hope not. Have you always lived here?” He asks though he knows the answer already. Wonwoo’s skin is thin and Soonyoung can see every vein under his eyes, and his eyes shine with enthusiasm in a way they only can when they haven’t seen famine or been without water for days.   
  
Wonwoo nods and nips on a dry patch of skin on his lips. “All my life, all seventeen years of it.” They are the same age. Soonyoung feels a pull of kinship... something common. Wonwoo smiles as he speaks, but lowers his voice. “I live a few streets down, but I spend most of my time here. Seungcheol is a good guy, lets me use the attic, eat his food, helps me not to get killed in the ring.” His smile becomes a tad bit shyer, like he doesn’t want Seungcheol to hear him. His bony fingers dig into the sleeves of his sweater too, making it hard for Soonyoung to look away. “Did you know he’s one of like five guys who have ever fought for retirement in the cages here?”

“... I don’t know what that means,” Soonyoung admits, but it only makes Wonwoo more excited. He fixes his position, crosses his legs, and clears his throat dramatically enough to make Soonyoung snicker.  
  
“Ok so,” he starts and cracks his knuckles. Soonyoung rolls his eyes. “Once you take part in your first fight, you have to pay yourself in. Deposit money, like… you’re betting on yourself. And every time you win, you get that money back with some extra on top. You can choose to take it and leave, or go up in the ranking. Ranking shows who you can fight. Going up in it means you get to fight stronger and stronger people who are worth more. Being worth more means more people bet on you, and you make more profit by beating the shit out of everyone. The amount of money you win by winning becomes bigger and bigger.” Soonyoung nods slowly, and only then Wonwoo dares to continue.   
  
“Fighting for retirement means getting to the top rank where you’re one of the strongest fighters, then winning everyone that is left. In the final fight you’re doubling your current worth. Which at that point is a _shitload_ of money. The gist is to prove you’re the strongest, get the title and money, and never go back.” Wonwoo’s eyes gleam with inspiration, other corner of his mouth higher than the other and his teeth peeking out. “That’s the way Seungcheol got this house. And his own cage.”   
  
Soonyoung lets out an impressed huff of air. There’s a silent pause where he looks at the ceiling, then crosses his legs at his ankles. “If I had all that money I’d just get a house from the coast though.”   
  
“The coast?” Wonwoo frowns and tilts his head, but it’s not unkind. Sooyoung nods with a little too much enthusiasm. Wonwoo is rubbing on him, christ.   
  
“I’ve never been, would be cool to live it once.”

  
“What are you doing in Seoul then? Why didn’t you go?”   
  
Soonyoung buries the honesty he had planned. He chickens out and shrugs. He looks down at his hands, then carefully looks for the words with the roundest of surfaces. Ones even Wonwoo can't grab or get any direction from, that say so little it’s painful. “I decided to become a city boy too. Nothing left for me back home, I heard that Seungcheol was hiring, and here I am.”   
  
Wonwoo sobers up and instead of leaning towards Soonyoung's mattress he leans away from it. “...Did you come here to fight?” He asks. It’s innocent, maybe concerned, because Soonyoung looks just like what he is. He is a kid in the middle of his first growth spurt, every bone and tendon sticking out wherever he’s not coated with softness. “Do you want Seungcheol to teach you?” He’s not like Wonwoo, who already has shoulders and muscles on his wiry arms. But Soonyoung can't control his mouth or keep his composure, poison raises to his tongue and he spits it out.

“I'm never going to fight again,” he hisses before he realizes it. Wonwoo seems a bit shaken, his eyes are wide and mouth a thin line, and he doesn’t say anything. It’s like the moment they just had rewinds into itself, everything zeroes out. He feels like throwing up.   
  
Soonyoung gets up and runs downstairs to start his work at the garage, and he spends his first night in the attic alone. The wind doesn’t howl, so he barely falls asleep.

 

⌖ ⌖ ⌖

 

It only takes a week for the men in red jackets and combat boots to start appearing around town. They stand by streetlights and corners in broad daylight, showing everyone the GPSC logo on their backs and telling them they’re from the Namyangju branch, here to keep everyone safe, and Soonyoung decides to never use the main streets again while running errands.

He uses long, devastatingly unpractical routes to sneak from the centre of the city to the outskirts of town, where the beehive-like tall buildings and public dormitories stand white and stark in the distance, lined up far enough where they can’t hurt him. The buzzing of people gets muted in his ears, the atmosphere is shifted with the rickety wooden houses and suffered family-homes built from stone and the ascetic huts with gardens taking the stage.  
  
Unlike the neatly cut trees in central Seoul that are planted with manmade seeds to withhold the rain and the weeks where the sun forgets to shine, the vines and pines that grow here are green, they have adapted, they stay alive because no one does anything for them. Sometimes Soonyoung removes his shoes while carrying the groceries, to shiver at the foreign sensation of grass tickling his toes where it grows through the cracks in the pavement.

Soonyoung likes it here. He likes the narrow street that leads to Seungcheol’s house, the way he has to pass through it to get to the garage, how he can run up to the attic, leap out of the only window there and climb up to the roof of the garage _._ And stay there when he wants peace from the other working kids.

It just takes another week for the red jackets to move further and search through the narrow alleys and overgrown yards of grass. Soonyoung carries two buckets of water in both hands, rounding the house to the garage, but he sees boots and he sees red and leaps into the shadow of the house between a wall and a thicket, other bucket falling all over him and the other staying in the middle of the path, orphaned and still. The silence that follows the ruckus is deafening.  
  
Soonyoung’s breathing speeds up, he breathes through the trickle of water that falls from his hair to his face, gathers at the tip of his nose and on his upper lip, then flies everywhere. He fists up grass and leaves and curls into himself, making himself small. Maybe just maybe his back will grow together with the house. Turn wooden.   
  
“The hell are you doing?”   
  
Wonwoo’s frown is confused beyond any level Soonyoung has seen on him before, but he doesn’t have the time to look at it before he yanks at Wonwoo’s shirt, hissing “Don’t blow my cover you _fuckwad—”_ with panic crawling up his throat. Wonwoo’s knees land on either side of him, hands on either side of his head, and they breathe the same air. The water falling from Soonyoung’s hair falls into Wonwoo’s hair, the shaggy tangled nest of it he has on his head. Wonwoo looks at him wildly, like he’s thoroughly spooked by such manhandling. As if he doesn’t take a fist to the face for a living.

“What are you doing?” Wonwoo asks again in a whisper that Soonyoung appreciates more than the humored smile on his dumb face. He straightens his back and their faces are level, every word out of his mouth can be felt on Soonyoung’s lips. Sunlight filters through the bushes and makes Wonwoo look like his skin is a tortoiseshell, patched in dark, light and lighter, and Soonyoung can feel the pulse from Wonwoo’s wrist against his own neck.   
  
He doesn’t breathe at all, or even consider answering. Something burns under Soonyoung’s skin, and the beating in his chest feels almost painful. The warmth on his face makes his eyes feel watery. Wonwoo asks again, “What is going on?”   
  
Soonyoung manages, “I’m hiding.” But his voice is tiny and cracks. Wonwoo smiles like he’s being silly, and leans out to the street to look around.   
  
“From who? There’s nobody there.”   
  
He _—_ whose first instinct is to doubt and see for himself _—_ stays there, caged between Wonwoo’s limbs, his t-shirt sticking to his chest. Wonwoo looks big against the sun, and for the first time in a while Soonyoung feels just as terrified as he feels safe. He asks “are you sure?” and Wonwoo nods.   
  
When Wonwoo removes himself from his body, with dirt sticking to his knees and round pearls of water rolling of strands of hair, Soonyoung feels such vast disappointment it could be called emptiness, which only fulfills for a beat when he notices the pretty shade of Wonwoo’s lips. 

It’s a thought he forces away.

 

⌖ ⌖ ⌖

 

Seungcheol asks him to help with the cages, so he does. It’s not that he likes it, but he has worked in the garage for a month, and Seungcheol has fed him, hidden him in the attic, taken Soonyoung’s secrets and stashed them away. Seungcheol is the only adult he has ever met that seems to actually like him, without pity, annoyance, or visions of benefit shining in the corner of his eye, and Soonyoung doesn’t care what it says about him as a person when he smiles and enthusiastically says, “I’ll do whatever you need.”  
  
Seungcheol smiles so his stubbled cheeks dip into dimples and his big eyes become thinner, and Soonyoung doesn’t see how the curve of his lips weakens when the kid walks away.   
  
It’s not all bad. That’s where Soonyoung sees Wonwoo in the cage for the first time. The cornered animal that fights for his life. But that doesn’t mean Soonyoung still doesn’t tremble and look at the blood that pours from Wonwoo’s crooked nose with something resembling sadness bubbling inside his chest at every groan Wonwoo heaves out and when winces at as his side pulses pain in objection. He looks small and weak, no more like an animal. Just a remain of a person. The blood won’t stop coming so Seungcheol set them outside in the alley to wait as he fetches ice.   
  
“Make sure he’s living when I come back,” he warns Soonyoung who looks like he’s going to throw up.   
  
Wonwoo smirks and removes the cloth from his nose to ask, “You gonna faint or something, Kwon? You look a bit shaken,” with the most nasal voice Soonyoung has ever heard. Soonyoung looks even more put off so Wonwoo laughs. His teeth are tinted orange from the blood.

“Does it hurt?” he asks and Wonwoo shrugs, then winces again. Soonyoung sinks to his knees on the messy job of a pavement, dodging Wonwoo’s hazy eyes and fighting away the yearning to brush away Wonwoo’s hair, to maybe comfort him with some encouraging words he himself has received. Soonyoung’s fingers wrap around the washcloth and he takes it from Wonwoo, inching closer, and tilts Wonwoo’s head by his jaw. His skin is hot under Soonyoung’s fingers. His adam’s apple bobs as he swallows down heavily, eyelashes fluttering uncontrollably. He’s a mess.   
  
“Keep it upwards like this, try not to swallow too much,” Soonyoung whispers, and presses the cloth back to Wonwoo’s nose.   
  
“Why are you whispering?” Wonwoo asks and his mouth quirks with the tease. But he’s whispering too.   
  
“I don’t want to scare your nose, it might bleed out.”

Wonwoo laughs, his whole face twists with the emotion and an airy peal of laughter bubbles past his mouth. It gives Soonyoung courage to not think, and brush away the long strands of hair from Wonwoo’s eyes, settle closer, and smile a bit too. It feels good, and only a little like he’s stealing something.

Wonwoo sighs contentedly and leans his head back even further. “I knew it.”  
  
He blinks. “What?”   
  
“You like me,” Wonwoo smirks and enjoys the confused look on Soonyoung’s face. “I know you’ve tried to not admit it, but you like me.”

“I—” I don’t. I do. “…Whatever.” Soonyoung uses his sleeve to wipe away a drop of blood from Wonwoo’s cheek. It relaxes under his touch, and Soonyoung’s fingertip sinks into the softness of it.

“I like you too, you know.” It’s difficult to take Wonwoo seriously when he sounds like a dying chipmunk with a lisp, but he still feels shy. The honesty in his eyes is always the same, but Soonyoung can’t get used to it. “You're a bit weird and touchy. And you cry a lot, but. You know. Still.”

Soonyoung huffs and swats his knee which apparently isn’t bruised because Wonwoo doesn’t scream in pain. “I don’t cry,” he argues but Wonwoo doesn’t yield.  
  
“You do,” Wonwoo counters gently. His eyes soften and Soonyoung frowns, something tying up into a knot under his sternum. Dread, terror. “In your sleep.”

Seungcheol steps out and Soonyoung doesn’t understand why he feels such a strong need to back away.

  
“Am I interrupting?” Seungcheol asks with a grin. Soonyoung bats his wide eyes and stumbles away from Wonwoo… then flies out of the alley, down the road, because he can’t stop or look back. He runs. His feet take him through the containers and abandoned machine halls, until he reaches the yellowing grass of their part of town. He shakes as he opens the door and climbs up to his attic, his and Wonwoo’s.   
  
The embarrassment is blinding, it’s muddy and murky and pours out of every orifice and pore, and Soonyoung kicks a table, punches a wall, throws every clock in the room, he thrashes until he’s sore, but doesn’t scream. He looks at his mattress like it has betrayed him, at the pillow that feels sullied now. He trashes again and breathes harshly through his teeth. He loses his shoe. His knuckles are red.   
  
Wonwoo’s hands wrap around his arms, slide in through his armpits, and pull. Soonyoung is lifted a few inches off the floor, softly, like he’s a toddler in his mother’s arms. Wonwoo breathes past his cheek and Soonyoung realizes he’s panting.   
  
“Stop wrecking my shit, Kwon. Seungcheol will kick you out.”   
  
Fuck. His chest keeps swelling, words taking all the space left by his inner organs. “I don’t want you to think I’m weak,” Soonyoung blurts out. His hands have a tremor in them and he stops fighting the grip Wonwoo has on him. He knows the honesty now, he has seen it, he wants to try it. “I don’t want anyone to think they need to help me anymore.”

Wonwoo lets him go, quietly. Soonyoung looks at the floor because he can’t stand to look at the mess he has made. The window above them create a spotlight that makes Soonyoung feel like he’s being accused.   
  
“You’re so weird, Kwon.” Wonwoo grabs him by the hair, not hurting, not pulling, just raises his face to meet his. His nose looks better, though there’s dry blood still speckled all over the front of his shirt. He’s so tall like this, up close. “You act like we’re getting married here, _fuck_.” The snort he heaves out is warm in the coldness of the room. “Just… don’t worry about it.” Soonyoung can feel Wonwoo’s thumb soothing a tuft of his hair. “I don’t care if you cry. Everyone cries.”

  
Wonwoo counts to four, then Soonyoung bursts into tears.   
  
It isn’t dramatic, his eyes just fill up with little pearls of saltwater, then spill and run down his cheeks. He breathes out a wet sob, and Wonwoo pats his shoulder with his other hand while petting his hair with another.

“It’s okay, man.”   
  
Soonyoung whimpers out a “Fuck you,” and keeps on sobbing, his breath hitching and tears welling up slowly but surely. “Just fuck off.”   
  
“Would that really make you feel better?” Wonwoo asks in a snicker, but his ears turn a bit red as he says it. He can’t say filthy things.

“It would make it worse.” Wiping away his tears and forcing the rest of it in, keeping his sobs in check, Soonyoung grimaces and pushes Wonwoo’s hands away. “Just help me clean this up.”

  
In the end they sit cross-legged in front of each other and apply plasters on each other’s fingers, bandaging the cuts made by the shards from broken clocks. They both have hands with faded cuts and bruises, with hardened knuckles and calloused palms.

“Guess we’re getting married after all,” Wonwoo says through a laugh while wrapping a plaster around Soonyoung’s left ring finger. Soonyoung pulls his hand back and glares at Wonwoo’s hand where he has a matching band-aid on. Wonwoo cackles at his mortified face so violently he falls backwards onto his mattress and then whines from the pain on his side.

The soft lighting from the lamp shines through the glass that is painted orange, red and green. Wonwoo relaxes on his back, kicks off his socks with his toes and stretches, carefully. The hem of his shirt rides up and shows a peak of his belly. It’s just a patch of skin, but so distracting. Soonyoung turns his eyes away.

  
⌖ ⌖ ⌖

 

Soonyoung realizes he’s gay when he’s thirteen. Well, he has always been gay, jerked off to boys as long as he has been jerking off, but that’s when he puts it into words. Without much eloquence.   
  
“Hyung, I think I’m gay.”   
  
Yoon Jeonghan chokes on his supplement bar and coughs so hard he topples over, his messy, uneven bob cut landing over his face and sticking to his lips. Soonyoung pats him on the back, and in the end Jeonghan does calm down and glugs down water before saying anything.

“You… you don’t like _me_ , right?” Jeonghan seems a bit scared by the idea, and visibly relaxes when Soonyoung shakes his head.   
  
“No, just… overall.” Jeonghan throws an arm around his shoulders, squeezes him close, and his hugs are one of Soonyoung’s favourite things. He stores it into the back pockets of his heart, for him to remember later.

“And you thought I should know?”   
  
Soonyoung shrugs and swings his legs that are hanging off a railing over the thirty floors of dormitories and offices. Their base is tall and sturdy, though creaks in every sandstorm, and the only place to breathe properly is here on the roof. “You’re the only one who cares."

Jeonghan laughs, snotty and expressive with his head thrown back. “That’s true.” Jeonghan is one of the older kids, leaders of their own teams, punching bags of their section captains, scapegoats for the adults. He’s responsible, he’s lazy, he’s popular and he’s destructive. Soonyoung isn’t in love with him, but he loves him.

“That’s fine, pit crew. You do you. Maybe one day another kid like you will land this shithole. You guys can fay it out in peace, I’ll take a walk.”

In Gyeonggi Private Security Company, Namyangju branch, he’s Kwon ‘pit crew’ Soonyoung, a military faction member since age ten. After fucking up the shooting range drills, then the landmine drills, _and_ the simulator drills, he’s thrown down to repairs to do what he’s actually good at—fiddling with machines.

Not like Soonyoung minds, all he’s in here for is to have a place to sleep in and food to eat, much like any other kid with no family or home. He can’t read, he can’t write, he’s not too pretty either, so he picks up a gun. It’s the only future someone like him can afford.

GPSC is just as keen as any other security company to have more manpower, be it human debris turned into human shields or actually talented soldiers. Age has nothing to do with it.

Guys from repairs just aren’t popular on the field, maybe because the ones who can’t do any other shit are usually sent to be mechanics. Or they go to the cafeteria, but everyone likes the people from the cafeteria.

Jeonghan was no different. First time Soonyoung is assigned to his team on a mission he gives his short stature and soft cheeks a look and says, “Fucking _pit crew_ ?” with intense disbelief, and spells out his words as if Soonyoung is demented.   
  
“Can you use a gun, sweetie?”   
  
After Soonyoung, the troubled child he was, punched him with his feeble eleven year old fist, Jeonghan gave him back a black eye that lasted for weeks. It was a match made in heaven.

“So you never think of girls?” Jeonghan asks him and Soonyoung shakes his head. “Not even the cafeteria ladies?”   
  
Soonyoung makes a face and shakes his head with even more rigor. “They’re old, ew.” Jeonghan blushes a bit and scoffs.   
  
“You’re queer, you wouldn’t understand.”

 

⌖ ⌖ ⌖

 

Sometimes Wonwoo doesn’t sleep in the attic, instead choosing to go home to his real bed or sleeping at an infirmary, nursing a rib. Those nights Soonyoung stares at his bed, and thinks of Wonwoo sleeping in it. He’s a fussy sleeper, with his feet peeking out beyond his comforter, his shirt riding up his stomach, neck craned in weird positions. His mouth falls open a bit. His eyelashes land against the dark circles under his eyes, and Soonyoung tries his best to count them though it is hopeless.   
  
Sometimes he gets hard, sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes Soonyoung turns on his stomach, spreads his knees and sneaks a hand down his pants. He pulls his dick out and tugs, tugs, strokes, breathing out a puff of shaky air, closing his eyes and imagining.

Sometimes it’s Wonwoo doing this to him, running his hand over his leaking dick, squeezing, teasing, whispering things to his ear and making sure that when Soonyoung comes, he shakes and cries out, he milks him until Soonyoung can’t give him anymore. And sometimes it’s him doing this to Wonwoo, he sees the face Wonwoo would make when he’s feeling good, his mouth twisting, cheeks flushing, tongue peeking out. He hears the sounds he would make, the deep rumble of his voice turning into airy high pitched whining. He imagines Wonwoo’s cock in his palm, ruddy and fat and how much he would come, how his hips would jerk and the mess would be everywhere.

Sometimes he stains his own sheets, sometimes he saves them by catching all the cum on a sock or coming inside his boxers. And sometimes, he carefully crawls into Wonwoo’s empty bed. He presses his head into Wonwoo’s pillow while stroking himself, precome flowing and making it easier, slicker, dirtier. The scent of Wonwoo surrounds him, floods all of his senses, and his whole body trembles and gives out when he comes. He may leave a drool stain but nothing else. Even then he does laundry.

He never sullies Wonwoo’s bed further than he already has.

 

⌖ ⌖ ⌖

  
Seungcheol has a girl he likes. Or, Seungcheol has a girl he is committed to. He always tells people he has someone, he never looks at anyone else twice. Soonyoung sees her around all the time, she plants kisses on Seungcheol’s mouth by the doorway, leaves baskets of food, waves at Soonyoung with short cute fingers whenever they meet.  
  
“You’re the new boy?” she asks. Soonyoung nods, and she smiles so wide that the inside of her pierced lip shows, making the piercing glimmer in the light. Her smiles are not soft, they are crooked and make her nose and cheeks crinkle. She’s just as old as Seungcheol, and looks desperately young in the exact same way. They both wear white shirts and blue denim, they both have pierced ears. For the first time ever Soonyoung understands what people mean when they say couples start to look the same. Or perhaps they hooked up because they looked the same.

Her voice is mellow whenever she speaks, and sounds like a vulture whenever she screams. And she screams. Seungcheol screams too. She and Seungcheol fight a lot, with dramatic hand movements and faces and moving from one room to another. 

“That’s why they don’t live together,” Wonwoo says through a mouthful of food, seated by the kitchen table and eating the dinner she had made for them all while Seungcheol and her shout in the yard, both holding a cigarette in their left hand, between the same fingers. “They would kill each other if she couldn’t go home to her mother and calm down.”

Soonyoung can’t help feeling like that’s a bit crooked, especially since he finds strands of her thick unruly hair from the kitchen table or the couch in the living room. She isn’t around, but she owns the house too. It’s sad she can’t settle in.

She and her mother cut hair for a living, and Seungcheol sends him and Wonwoo there when their hair grows over their ears. Mother, as everyone calls her, is also pierced in the face. She seats them down by the porch with their shirts off and their paling skins catching the unforgiving between-season sun.

Soonyoung grimaces and whines when hands grasp his tangles and try to comb them open with strong pulls, and he looks over to his left where Wonwoo who also has a tear in his eye and his teeth gritting together like he might sob otherwise. Soonyoung laughs at him and Wonwoo just whimpers and tries to kick him.

“Don’t you boys ever wash yourselves?” Mother complains in her old, whiskey-worn voice, with hisses, grizzle and tut-tuts. “This is like the fur of a stray dog. You brats better not have fleas.”   
  
“She always says that,” Wonwoo whispers while leaning closer to Soonyoung, and Mother clocks him in the forehead with the wooden comb in her hand for not staying still.   
  
“It’s so nice to see Wonwoo have friends,” the daughter says with a giggle. “Wonwoo has never had many friends, did you know that Soonyoung? He’s a bit of a bore.”   
  
Wonwoo’s ears turn a funny color and he pulls his shoulders up, crouches away from his embarrassment. “Don’t say that, noona.” His shoulders are bony, sheen, and his collarbone gleams as if the coverage of skin isn’t there. Soonyoung’s eyes follow along it, and he steals a glance at the dusty pink shade of Wonwoo’s nipples and the hairs that grow scarcely around the area.

“I’ve noticed,” Soonyoung states flatly. Wonwoo punches him in the shoulder, and Soonyoung hides his smug smile by turning his head.   
  
“Maybe it’s not that you can’t make friends, most people just don’t understand you?” she tries with another laugh, but Wonwoo’s mouth is permanently in a pout.

“I don’t want to get relationship advice from you, noona. You’re the one getting fat from breaking up with Seungcheol so much. No one likes emotional eaters.”   
  
This time she’s the one who hits him with a comb, but it’s more gentle. Teasing. She’s still smiling, but now she just looks really happy, and Soonyoung can’t take his eyes off of the way she absentmindedly touches her belly. Hairs raise up everywhere on his body, and he has to slowly turn and look to the front while she untangles his hair. Excitement and nervousness flows through his blood, but he sits still nicely until she is done.

With their napes bare and bangs trimmed they pull their shirts back on and leave Mother to brush away their hair. Wonwoo shouts a thank you and forces Soonyoung to bow down politely too before they head back to the garage.   
  
“Seungcheol might seriously kill me for calling her fat,” Wonwoo worries out loud, hands in his pockets and tongue peeking out of his mouth. Soonyoung blinks.   
  
“She’s pregnant, dumbass.”   
  
Wonwoo stops dead on his tracks and for a while it looks like his brain just fails on him. “What?”   
  
“The shape, how she touched it, how she felt about it. She’s gonna have a baby.”

Wonwoo looks miserable. Then, elated. Then, just shocked.

“Wow.”

Soonyoung allows his shoulders to tremble, for goosebumps to cover his skin. He licks his lips and runs his hands through his newly cut hair with an excited smile. “I wonder how far along it is… I’ve never seen a baby. I want to see one.”   
  
They keep walking and Wonwoo hums, taking steps with more spring in them now and then. Finally he stops, like an idea just dawned to him. “You don’t have to wait though, we can go see a baby right now.”   
  
He doesn’t lie. Wonwoo grins and leads him through the neighbourhood to a house Soonyoung hasn’t been to before, one with a sturdy gate and the walls painted a pale green. “Who lives here?” Soonyoung asks as Wonwoo opens the gate.   
  
“Hostess. She kinda goes by a thousand different names, but she likes having people over and everyone likes her.” The gate doesn't even hitch when you open it, the silent smoothness is pleasing. They climb up to the porch. The front door is unlocked. “So, Hostess.”

As soon as Soonyoung steps in, a voice calls from another room, “Leave your shoes.” Wonwoo kicks them off and Soonyoung does the same.

“Jeon Wonwoo,” she says through a big smile and sweeps back her big hair when the two of them wander into the kitchen. She has a cup of something warm in her hands and the warmth travels up to her eyes, gazes upon him and makes Soonyoung feel warm as well.

“Who's your friend?”

“Kwon Soonyoung here,” Wonwoo starts and slings a hand around Soonyoung's shoulders. “He has never seen a baby and I promised he could see one. Is it okay if we go see the baby?”

Soonyoung bows his head down and feels a hotness in the back of his neck, embarrassment and nervousness soaking him because he’s the one in a strange house asking strange things from a complete stranger. He might not have been raised right, but he knows this is rude. The Hostess keeps smiling through her eyelashes and bronze makeup. “That's fine with me. Teach Soonyoung how to hold a baby before picking anyone up though.”

Wonwoo squeezes Soonyoung’s shoulder, making him blush a tad more intensely. “Yeah, we won't be long. Thanks, noona.” Wonwoo pushes him out of the room by the shoulders, not caring about how much Soonyoung’s heels dig into the floor.

Past the kitchen there’s a bedroom with a crib in it. It’s painted a variety of different colours, all worn, splatter of dusty pink there and a sweep of green, yellow, blue and purple here. Above it hangs a mobile made of wood, string and sleek blue stones that glimmer in the sunlight, and chime against each other when the slightest breeze follows them in.

Soonyoung takes nervous steps towards the crib, gets down on his knees by it and peeks in while Wonwoo stands next to him.

The child is… small. Tiny. He, or she, he can’t really tell, is so small his chest feels odd, Soonyoung doesn’t dare to breathe, more less laugh at how bizarre the baby looks. “Is it a girl or a boy?” He asks in a whisper because the baby sleeps. Wonwoo mouths _girl_ and grins at Soonyoung’s wide, amazed eyes. The fucker.   
  
Her fists are the smallest he has ever seen, her toes too, her nose too, her ears as well. “She’s so fucking small,” he whispers hastily, confused and absolutely stunned. Then he makes a terrified face and looks at Wonwoo desperately. “Do you think she heard that?”   
  
It throws him off kilter to see Wonwoo is already looking at him, his stare heavy and straightforward. He quickly averts his eyes and sits next to Soonyoung, shaking his head. “I bet she didn’t understand it. You can teach her all the cusses when she’s bigger though.”   
  
They look at her for a long time in silence, at her small mouth and how she sometimes opens it and closes it and then stretches her short arms. The black tuft on top of her head sways from one side to the other.   
  
“I can’t believe Seungcheol is going to have one of these,” Wonwoo whispers in disbelief.   
  
“Maybe the baby isn’t his,” Soonyoung jokes, but Wonwoo doesn’t smile. Like it’s not a joke at all.   
  
“I hope so.” He puts his hand down into the crib and reaches out his bony index-finger. Soonyoung can see a scar on his left ring-finger that matches his, and leans a bit closer, inches into Wonwoo’s space, licks his lips. The baby wraps her tiny fingers around Wonwoo’s digit, and Wonwoo smiles at her. “I like things the way they are now.”   
  
Soonyoung kisses him.

 

⌖ ⌖ ⌖

 

At the time of their first kiss Soonyoung had never kissed anyone, and neither had Wonwoo. As Soonyoung was the one to commit the crime, he stays rooted on the floor as soon as Wonwoo pulls away from the light peck, allowing Wonwoo the option to run away if he wishes. His face is twisted in a mess of different emotions and words unsaid, like he’s about to break a sweat, and when he opens his mouth only a strained utterance falls out. Soonyoung’s heart caves into itself because it’s endearing.

“Why?”

It’s a good question, but Soonyoung doesn’t have an answer. He has too many.

“I wanted to.” It sounds too selfish out loud. “Because you’re… good.” He lacks a better word and grimaces slightly. “I felt like it. I needed to—” He just keeps saying more and more things and Wonwoo keeps quiet through all of them. “I don’t like girls.” It’s the obvious but that’s what you state once everything else is out there, when everything else has been said. “I like you.” Except the unexpected. Soonyoung gags on air like a fish out of water.   
  
The baby whines and starts sobbing, and Wonwoo is up before she gets to pull in a deep breath into her tiny coin-sized lungs and scream. The Hostess walks into the room just when Wonwoo opens the window of the nursery and leaps out as she shrieks, “What are you doing!?”   
  
Soonyoung can hear the rustle of the Korean rose shrub as Wonwoo falls in and makes his leave. The Hostess huffs and comes to the crib, picking up her daughter and calming her down with a smile. “I’m sorry,” Soonyoung says to the baby and to her, but she waves him off.   
  
“She’s a baby, they cry no matter how much you apologize.” She gets seated into a creaking rocking-chair and undoes buttons of her blouse, and Soonyoung quickly looks somewhere else, focusing on the mobile above the baby’s bed.   
  
“What’s with Wonwoo?” she asks as the baby starts to suckle.   
  
The soft light of the room is pierced by the spins of the blue stones. They look like jewels. “We had a fight,” he forces out in a croak.  
  
The Hostess laughs and pets her daughter’s hair with gentle fingertips. “That is so out of character.” Soonyoung steals a look at her, realizing she’s beautiful. “Him, being so dramatic.”

When Soonyoung walks home, the evening wind is so vivid in the roots of his newly shortened hair. Hitherto he hadn’t thought about anything he said in the nursery, but now thoughts are all he has. Like a dam has been broken.

Wonwoo isn’t on the attic when Soonyoung arrives, but the window is open. Soonyoung walks to it, and he’s right, Wonwoo sits hunched with his face in a deep red frown on the garage roof, painted red by the setting sun.   
  
“How many windows are you gonna go through today?”   
  
Startled and shaky, he’s this close to falling off the roof and Soonyoung smiles at him sadly. It only turns Wonwoo’s face sourer. “You stalking me or something?”   
  
“I*m standing in my own room.”   
  
“It was my room first.”   
  
“Caught me. I’m stalking you. I keep locks of your hair in a necklace.”   
  
“That’s disgusting.”   
  
“Anything to make you love me.”   
  
Too soon. He regrets saying it out loud and looks down into the tiny slice of space left between the garage building and their house. He could jump down and hit the ground, break all his bones and get stuck so no-one could get his gooey gory worthless remains out of there. The sun would scorch him and make his flesh rot, and Wonwoo would have to live in the stench and deal with the flies for months.

He kind of wishes he hadn’t thought of that right then, since Wonwoo crawls over and yanks him closer by the collar of Soonyoung’s shirt. Soonyoung has to squeeze the frame of the window tightly as the bottom of his feet rise off the floor, he’s left on his tiptoes, and Wonwoo leans in. Their second kiss is determined, Wonwoo’s mouth is open, and he takes Soonyoung’s upper lip in between both of his own.   
  
Goosebumps spread on Soonyoung’s arms and he squeezes his eyes shut, swallows any noise that wants to escape. Wonwoo pulls away and sets Soonyoung back down on his heels, then releases the fabric from his fingers, and when Soonyoung opens his eyes Wonwoo’s cheeks are red and he won’t stop staring at Soonyoung’s lips.   
  
“Payback,” he finally states, and suddenly Soonyoung wouldn’t mind another war if this is what he gets.   
  
They call ‘payback’ a lot that night. The game goes on forever. When Wonwoo and him are brushing their teeth, Soonyoung waits for Seungcheol to leave the bathroom before he presses his toothpaste-foamed mouth against Wonwoo’s. “Payback,” he whispers, and Wonwoo splutters. When they rinse off their mouths, Wonwoo spits first and then pecks Soonyoung’s bare shoulder with the tips of his ears turning glaringly red.   
  
“Payback.”   
  
Wonwoo empties his bed before lying down, and Soonyoung leans in to place a kiss to the side of Wonwoo’s neck. The skin there is so soft and so warm, Soonyoung’s lips ache afterwards. The ghost of Wonwoo’s pulse haunts them.   
  
“Payback.”   
  
It’s funny how Wonwoo first whacks him in the ribs and looks at Soonyoung like he’s _a monster,_ then brings his bed closer, and Soonyoung moves his too. It’s a slow migration from their respective slots of room, tensed by the shy gaze they share.   
  
Their mattresses form a single bigger one, the lights get turned off, they lie down. They keep having their revenge with quick pecks on the cheeks, forehead, tip of Wonwoo’s nose, the corner of Soonyoung’s eye, lower lip, upper lip, tip of a tongue. In the end they forget to say payback, and snicker and laugh instead.   


Wonwoo tangles his fingers into Soonyoung’s hair and breathes against his cheek, swallowing and fluttering his eyelashes so they tickle Soonyoung’s skin. They are both out of breath and probably covered in spit in a sneaky way you can’t really feel. “Truce?” he says in his deep voice, both syllables diving out of his chest.   
  
“Never;” Soonyoung replies and Wonwoo’s toes curls against his own under the covers as his lips kiss Wonwoo’s jawline, the spot right next to his ear. “I hold no truces, I take no prisoners.” Wonwoo _giggles._

His lips fit well against Soonyoung’s, he moves them whenever Soonyoung doesn’t dare to, and licks at Soonyoung’s lips when the kiss goes on for too long. They both have to wipe their mouths when they pull away, there’s so much spit it goes down Soonyoung’s chin.   
  
Soonyoung wakes up the next morning and Wonwoo is still there, face slack and soft, his mouth looking like it’s bruising, tinted a rough rose petal pink.

  
  
⌖ ⌖ ⌖

 

Wonwoo has a nemesis.   
  
“I've been trying to get that airhead crying for months,” Wonwoo explains while landing hits on a punching bag. Soonyoung is sprawled on the floor in the far back corner of the room, which is really just the basement of Seungcheol’s garage. Half of the room is filled with spare parts, half of it is filled with gym equipment. Soonyoung usually spends his time in the storage, digging up spare parts, while Wonwoo keeps up his meathead ways.   
  
“Junhui’s the top in our ranking, and we usually go neck and neck, but he’s _… slippery_. I never win him. Last time I came close, this time I’m gonna do it.” He smiles all crooked and sly. Soonyoung snorts.   
  
There’s a pause only filled by the sound of Wonwoo’s fists hitting the bag. “What are you going to do with the money? Once you retire.” Wonwoo thinks on it for a while, mouth in a thoughtful pout.   
  
“Put my brother through school, all the way.” Soonyoung nods, face falling into a scowl slowly. He slips off his shoe and throws it at Wonwoo. It hits him square in the ass and he yelps in pain, “The fuck, Kwon?”   
  
“You never told me you have a brother.”   
  
“You’ve never talked about your family either.”   
  
“You _have_ a family!” Wonwoo rolls his eyes and starts removing the binds from his hands.   
  
“I have a kid brother. Bohyuk, an ugly short thing.” He makes grabby hands at his water bottle and Soonyoung throws it over to him. “Our parents never really took care of me or put me through school, so I decided to just… Get money and make sure he becomes too smart to be shit like me, mom and dad. Fighting was the easiest fix. He’s graduating elementary soon.”   
  
Fingernails digging into the floor, Soonyoung feels an itch under his skin. Something restless and relentless bothers him as he listens to Wonwoo, looks at his somber face. “Why don’t you go to school yourself? You can already read and write. You’re smart.”   
  
Wonwoo gives him a blank stare and points at himself with a cock of his head. “You ever seen a first grader this size?” Soonyoung heaves out a peal of bright laugher and Wonwoo smiles too. “It’s too late for me, Soonyoung. But that brat is staying in school or paying me back my money. Well, he will be paying me back anyhow once he gets a job as a CEO somewhere.”   
  
“But first you’ll need to beat the shit out of Junhui,” Soonyoung retorts. Wonwoo nods.   
  
“Exactly.” 

He sees Junhui the next Saturday night. Soonyoung stands by as Wonwoo passes the crowd to the cage, right next to Seungcheol, and it’s him who grabs Soonyoung by his arm and points at Junhui standing on the other side.  
  
“That’s the one.”   
  
He’s just as long and skinny as Wonwoo and just as muscular in the right places, he is just as young and has a crooked smile, the kind they share. But he has an odd drag in his eyes, like everything is in slow-motion for him and it’s not difficult to deduct he’s probably drugged out of his mind. His coach pats him on the back and Junhui looks like he might throw up or get a panic attack, but soon he’s back to smiling.

  
“Fucking shit,” Seungcheol groans and scratches the back of his head. This isn’t good.” Soonyoung feels a wave of concern wallowing inside his gut and peers into the cage as Wonwoo and Junhui both step in and the hatches are closed behind them.   
  
“Why?” Junhui doesn’t seem too strong, but his eyes lit up once they land on Wonwoo. He’s not afraid. A happy jump spurs into his step.   
  
Seungcheol rattles the cage and gets Wonwoo’s attention. “Jeon, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” he warns, but Wonwoo’s eyes are on Junhui. Wonwoo smiles, with the tip of his tongue peeking out and a twinkle in his eye. Junhui smiles right back at him. The bell sounds and the two of them collide. The crowd screams.   
  
“They’re both just as fast and just as strong, but somehow Junhui always ends up winning.” Seungcheol keeps a close eye on Wonwoo’s feet, at how the dig into Junhui’s feet and how his sole burrows a deep blow into the back of Junhui’s knee. “It gets Wonwoo riled up, feeling like pushing it further than he physically can.” Junhui’s face doesn’t twist, though his other leg falls limp for a split second, he falls down, and Wonwoo jumps back, takes distance. Seungcheol looks like he feels ill, and Sooyoung’s eyes fly from the cage to him and back again.   
  
“Some people can’t fight without a relief, and would fight to death for that relief. It creates a circle.”   
  
Wonwoo sinks a fist to the dead center of Junhui’s cheek and tries to push him down but Junhui rolls with it, turns and falls and ends up on top of Wonwoo and brings his elbow down so it pushes all air out of Wonwoo. He grits his teeth and doesn’t scream, but Soonyoung does. Wonwoo takes a fresh breath, wincing in pain, and knees Junhui in the jaw.   
  
Seungcheol looks away when Junhui fights back, and it’s the first time Soonyoung has seen him like this. Like he can’t bear to watch. “That kid is too drugged up to feel a fucking thing.” Junhui’s jaw ends up in a weird angle, chin not aligning with his adam’s apple. “If I knew he was circling the drain like this I wouldn’t have let him in the ring, fuck.”   
  
Wonwoo is noticing it, his smile dying out and turning into something wrecked, disappointed, _miserable._ Junhui keeps getting up, a trail of blood mingled with spit flowing out of his mouth and bringing out a chip of a tooth with it. Wonwoo kicks him in the side, goes full-on offense, but Junhui’s too slow to bring up a good block.   
  
“How do you win someone who doesn’t feel pain?” Soonyoung says, too quiet and too weak to be heard in the crowd, but he knows the answer. Junhui has a wild smile on his swollen face, and Wonwoo twists him into a position he can’t get out of, not with his fucked up legs, or the hands that can’t feel themselves.   
  
As soon as the bell rings, Wonwoo drops Junhui and walks out. Wonwoo has never looked too satisfied after a fight, but this is the first time he looks heartbroken.

Soonyoung waits in a squat in his usual spot on the alley, staring down the tiles of the opposite wall. He thinks how to maybe comfort Wonwoo, if he even needs it. He squeezes his jacket closer to himself and breathes. The door opens.

The corner of Wonwoo’s eye is red, turning purple. He looks up with tense and tired eyes, like he has been defeated. Soonyoung saw where he took his hits so when he steps closer, he doesn't touch any of the places that might be bruising, just takes Wonwoo’s bag and starts walking. Wonwoo’s step drags when he follows.

The air is cold and dry, making Soonyoung wish he had put on more clothes. His breath comes out in heavy puffs and crystallized particles shine against the few sad streetlights, like someone’s wasting glitter.

“How many more after this?” Soonyoung finally asks, to maybe steer it all into a more positive direction. He barely finishes the sentence before Wonwoo crowds his space and pushes him against a wall, the heels of his hands digging into Soonyoung’s shoulders painfully.

Wonwoo’s lips cover Soonyoung's own quickly enough that no sound can slip out, no words can be formed and no emotions can be expressed. His mouth tastes like blood, his lips move jerkily like he’s afraid, and the way his hands cling on to Soonyoung’s clothes reminds Soonyoung of a small child.

Wonwoo's mouth slides away from his, lips still wet as they drag across his cheek and down into the crook of Soonyoung's neck where he hides his face and drags in a heavy breathe. Soonyoung feels breathless, like there’s something heavy standing on his chest.

  
“Are you okay?” He asks. And Wonwoo nods, becoming smaller and smaller.   
  
He cups Wonwoo’s cheeks and pulls his face out of hiding, the pad of his thumb digging into the bruise riding high on his cheekbone. Wonwoo looks miserable, a murky mess of both sadness and anger swimming in his eyes.   
  
“He was the only thing I looked forward to. The only good thing about fighting was to do it with him. And he took that away.” The wetness that builds up in his eyes makes Soonyoung feel a pulse of relief thinking that Wonwoo didn’t have to see Junhui after the match, convulsing on the floor through a pitiful flow of tears and sobs of a foreign language.   
  
Soonyoung presses his forehead against Wonwoo’s, intertwines their fingers, allows their noses to bump together.Soonyoung holds his hand on the way home, and they take the darkest streets so they don't have to let go even once. It feels like the longest commitment of Soonyoung’s life.   
  
“Do you want to come over?”   
  
The shadow of Wonwoo’s house stands tall, and Soonyoung trembles before asking “Do you want me to?” Wonwoo forces a smile and holds his side.   
  
“I could use the bed.”   
  
The Jeon house smells nothing like Wonwoo and looks nothing like Wonwoo. They don’t leave their shoes by the door, Wonwoo just drags him in. The lights aren’t on. No one seems to be home.   
  
Wonwoo’s room has nothing on the walls, barely nothing on the desks or shelves. But his bed looks gorgeous in it’s simplicity and with the navy blue polka dot sheets. When Soonyoung sits on it he gets startled by the dip his weight creates.   
  
“It’s like a goddamn cloud,” he muses in awe of the softness, then laughs wildly as Wonwoo pushes him down on it with a tight hug.  
  


⌖ ⌖ ⌖  

 

“You got a birthday, pit crew?” Jeonghan starts even before his ass hits the deck where Soonyoung is seated, looking at the night sky, the cracks in the black that glow in green and red in between the stars. He doesn’t salute, but Jeonghan always lets it go. Jeonghan sets his gun down to where Soonyoung’s rests.  
  
Soonyoung looks at him weirdly. “Of course I have a birthday.” Jeonghan rolls his eyes and swats and open palm against the back of Soonyoung’s head, making him hiss.   
  
“Do you _know_ your birthday, smartass?”   
  
Soonyoung nods. “June 15,” he answers. “Why?”   
  
Jeonghan grins widely and his shoulders wiggle from excitement alone. He looks stupid. “You know little Lee from E Company? He can tell you how you’ll die just from your birthday and a deck of cards.”   
  
They fall into a silence Soonyoung doesn’t feel bad about, not even when he sees Jeonghan’s smile faltering. He can actually see the stars tonight. “I’m not interested.”   
  
Jeonghan smacks his head again. “Why? It’s some useful fucking information.” He sounds hasty but Soonyoung has learned not to be afraid of him. He never has to be though he’s taller and older.   
  
“I’m not interested because I don’t want to know,” Soonyoung says and pulls his knees closer to himself, his position making him feel small under the vast sky. Meaningless like a speck of dust. “I don’t want to die,” he finally says, quiet and weak. Jeonghan goes silent.   
  
“... God, pit crew, so dark.”   
  
“Do you want to die then?” Soonyoung demands with a scowl, fingers digging into the fabric of his sleeves.   
  
“Fundamentally? Of course not, fuck.” Jeonghan snorts but the smile he is left with seems empty. He looks over the edge of the deck into the sand that covers everything that surrounds them. He unholsters his pistol and stares it down. His hand are a bit bigger than Soonyoung’s so he reaches the trigger effortlessly. “But rather than stay here forever, I’d die any time, any way.”   
  
Soonyoung feels choked up but he wants to believe it’s the freezing coldness. “Then there’s no use finding out how you go, right? It.. doesn’t matter.”

Jeonghan gives him a long, careful look. When his hand meets the back of Soonyoung’s head, it’s gentle. He pets Soonyoung’s hair for two careful strokes.  
  
“Yeah… I suppose it doesn’t.”

 

⌖ ⌖ ⌖

 

  
  
“It really didn’t matter,” Soonyoung snorts and Wonwoo raises his brows, listening to the story intently. They’re bundled up into the blue polka dot sheets, cold toes warming each other up. “In the end Jeonghan got shot in the head, and that was it. Knowing that or being promised anything else would have just made him mad,” he tries to tell it in a joking tone, but a piece gets caught in his throat. His eyes are filled with tears before he can notice it, and with a snort he wipes them away.

“The fucker told me to run and report the headcount of the invaders to the next company and just ran into the bullet.” Wonwoo looks like he might cry too, his chest goes up and comes down. Soonyoung smiles, small and a bit pathetic. “Any other captain would have thrown me in and reported back himself.”

“Is that why you left?”   
  
Soonyoung has thought about it a lot, why he chose to drop his gear and run then and not before or after, or why he chose to become a deserter in the first place. “I left because it was… bad. But it was always bad. Jeonghan just made me understand it.” He closes his eyes and allows himself to sink into the bed, let the covers and softness of the mattress swallow him whole. It’s so comfortable it’s almost uncomfortable. “I never had anything to lose before him, and before I realized it he was gone.”

The warmth gets a bit smothering in the end, and Soonyoung pulls the cover off of himself and lays it upon Wonwoo instead. He’s the one with icy hands and feet. “I’m not used to… talking about this like this. In past tense. Seungcheol knows where I’m from, and now you.” He pulls off his shirt and Wonwoo looks alarmed for a moment.

“Are you gonna jump my bones now?” Soonyoung scoffs at that and lies down again. Because he doesn’t. Wonwoo takes his hand and squeezes in the lack of anything better to say or do, and Soonyoung knows he probably wants to say a million things.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Wonwoo whispers and scans the whole expanse of Soonyoung’s face, his features and his expressions. “You’re my best friend, you know?”   
  
Soonyoung smiles in a way he doesn’t really know how, big and silly, so his face pulls into awkward directions and he feels ugly, but it makes Wonwoo look at him like he’s every party and every present and every beautiful word he has ever received, wrapped up with a pretty bow.   
  
“I know. You’re mine too.”

Sleeping in Wonwoo’s bed feels like a dare, a reckless test of courage. Maybe it’s because it’s the house of his family, he has a real bed with sheets and comforters, or that they smell of something else than the filth of past days. It’s different from the times Soonyoung presses his face into the matter of his mattress that smells like sweat and skin and people. It’s so clean it surges through him, riles up fear in places Soonyoung can’t feel. He doesn’t dare to laugh or cry or come or kiss in the sheets without feeling like they will stain.

But he goes for the easy fix of acceptance. It’s okay to stain sometimes.

  
  
⌖ ⌖ ⌖

 

The first time Soonyoung tastes alcohol, it’s just as bad as he thought it would be. The experience pats all of his expectations on the back. The Hostess has a party that is one quarter a party for her daughter who is getting a name soon, one quarter a party for Seungcheol’s pregnant girlfriend, one quarter a party that happened only because the men from the neighbourhood wanted to come over and have booze and one quarter of the consequences.

Seungcheol seems to be friends with everyone there, everyone seems to be friends with each other. Soonyoung eyes carefully all the men with beards and wrinkles and the ones with tan youthful skin and flowers on their clothes. The women fuss over the Hostess’ baby and house, and everyone that hugs Seungcheol roughly also ruffles Wonwoo’s hair or pats him on the back.   
  
They don’t really touch Soonyoung, just laugh at how stiff he is, glued to his chair.

The smell that raises from the glass Seungcheol offers him is _awful_ and reminds him of a doctor’s office. Seungcheol notices the doubtful stare the glass receives and just sets it in front of Soonyoung without a word, and Soonyoung knows it’s up to him to either take a sip or leave it there.   
  
But his eyes wander over to the other side of the room where Wonwoo is holding a bottle with a steady hand, his knuckles jutting out and eyes softening the more he talks to the owner of the house. Whenever he takes a sip, he doesn’t grimace. His soft, bread-batter cheeks stay shaped in a smile, and Soonyoung grabs his glass and downs it, making all of Seungcheol’s friends cheer and laugh and pat him on the back so the liquor burns and slushes around in his throat and he nearly gags. That creates a new riot, bigger than last, and the laughter only stops once he stops spluttering.

“Was it that bad?” Seungcheol whispers to him through a mouthful of smoke, smell of cigarettes suddennly added to the mix of irritation, and Soonyoung wipes away a few tears.   
  
“Worse.” Wonwoo is still laughing at him and the pretty Hostess giggles along with him. Soonyoung has never felt this lonely in a room full of people, so he asks for another glass.

He leaves after a few hours and too many drinks to count, the idea floating on the surface of his drunken mind so he doesn’t argue with it. While he’s pulling on his shoes, Soonyoung looks at the table where Seungcheol is telling stories about the times when he used to still fight, but Wonwoo is nowhere to be seen. He shuts the door behind him softly so the infant doesn’t start crying, if she still has any hearing-capabilities left after the roaring of wasted adult men.

  
Soonyoung remembers to take a left, then another left, then sways on his heels before suddenly surging down for what feels like a hundred miles into a messy squat, hands hitting the concrete wall of the tunnel he’s in with his fingers spread out, and Soonyoung realizes he's vomiting only once the pungent smell of bile hits his nose. His tongue is a numb lump of meat inside his mouth and his teeth hover above their nests, his eyes gather tears when a heave rocks his bones violently enough to make his throat expand, gag, and his whole gut is _burning_ from the strain on his muscles. The skin of his face feels too tight to fit all around his head when he grimaces and opens his mouth wide.

Soonyoung stays there and breathes in, feeling more spent than after a workout. Perhaps puking could give you abs. The thought sounds funnier in his head and Soonyoung breathes out a giggle and shakes his head before it’s time to get up on his feet.

His stance is nowhere close to its usual steadiness, the swooning teeter of his balance is a bit scary and foreign and something Soonyoung really doesn't enjoy. Lights blur together in his eyes, and he remembers to wipe away a tear. Soonyoung starts by taking a step, then another, but he is constantly pulled off kilter and his stride is so drunken he wants to laugh. Soonyoung _had_ expected being drunk would be this unpleasant. What he hadn't expected was that getting drunk would be this easy.

Perhaps he looks up to the sky for a bit too long and doesn’t remember to follow the wall on his left side, he turns around too many times while following the glimmer of a space station swimming through the night sky, rotating endlessly. When Soonyoung finally brings his eyes down to the ground and looks at the road in front of him, he has no clue where he is.   
  
It’s a crossroad, he’s surrounded by tiny houses everywhere and can’t really tell any of them apart. Nothing looks familiar. He feels hazy and lazy, and sits his ass down right there in the middle of the road.   
  
“Soonyoung.”   
  
He wakes up in a jolt, looking up to see Wonwoo there in front of him. He dozed off and his ass is completely numb. “Are you okay?” Wonwoo frowns in concern and searches Soonyoung’s eyes that feel a bit too lazy to hold on to a single point or a direction, so he blinks slowly.   
  
"I'm lost."

Wonwoo considers him with a blank face in complete silence. "... You're like, two blocks from home."

"Well I don't know which two blocks!" Soonyoung yells, high pitched and slurring and points at every crossing road. Wonwoo sighs and drags him up to his feet, and keeps on dragging him home.   
  
Soonyoung makes them nearly fall in through the front door, then stumbles against the wall and takes Wonwoo with him. The walls is cold against his back and Wonwoo is warm against his front, and he gives Wonwoo a kiss on the cheek for that. “You smell like alcohol,” Soonyoung complains and crinkles his nose. Wonwoo snorts.   
  
“You taste, sound and look like alcohol.” Wonwoo grimaces. “And vomit.” Soonyoung only now realizes his breath probably reeks and a toothbrush is the only one who can comfort him. He crawls upstairs to clean his teeth and tongue while Wonwoo picks up all the stuff Soonyoung accidentally pushes over and drops to the floor on his way. His frames fill the doorframe and his eyes are fond while looking at Soonyoung brushing his teeth and fighting off his pants. "You're so drunk."  
  
"What did you expect?" Soonyoung counters through a mouthful of toothpaste and scratches his boxer-clad ass. "I never got booze in the military, I barely got chocolate for my birthday." He rinses his mouth off with water and Wonwoo sneaks in closer, hugging him from behind and setting his chin on Soonyoung's shoulder.  
  
"I've seen people get wasted for the first time. Your level of messy is unique."  
  
"You're just jealous of my beautiful-mess... look. Style."  
  
Wonwoo kisses the back of his neck, swaying on his feet. He's not too sober either, and his hands squeeze Soonyoung closer to him, tighter and tighter. Soonyoung feels full, filled to the brim, every cavity of his body buzzing with a light feeling. He's so light he will burst. "Beauty fades, Soonyoungie. Dumb is forever."

Soonyoung turns around and leans his lower back against the sink, holds on to it, knuckles turning white. Wonwoo laces his hands together behind Soonyoung's back instead.  
  
"Thank god," Soonyoung breathes out with a laugh.  
  
"Why?"  
  
  Soonyoung can't control his proud grin. "You'll live forever."  
  
Wonwoo rolls his eyes though he dug this grave for himself. He leans in for a kiss and Soonyoung digs his fingertips into the fabric of Wonwoo's white shirt. He has dirt under his fingernails and probably on his fingernails and all around his fingernails, but as Wonwoo licks into his mouth Soonyoung not only embraces the easy fix of acceptance, but feels proud. The bruises he has left along the line of Wonwoo's neck stand out from the healthy tan of his skin and assimilate into the rest of Wonwoo's bruises, his handprints stick to Wonwoo's clothes, the tint of red he leaves on Wonwoo's lips is beautiful.  
  
"Moron," Wonwoo murmurs against his lips. "You'll live forever too, then. Maybe longer than me. Forever times two." It's what Soonyoung needs, with the bathroom floor chilling the soles of his feet and Wonwoo's body heat lulling him to sleep in contrast. His toes curl and Wonwoo smiles against his mouth.  
  
"Then the world better watch it."   
  
"Exactly."


End file.
